Abstract #3887

Brain mechanisms underlying Gulf War Illness revealed by connectomics signatures of the disease

Kaundinya Gopinath¹, Unal Sakoglu², Bruce Crosson^3,4, and Robert Haley⁵

¹Department of Radiology & Imaging Sciences, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, United States, ²University of Houston-Clear Lake, Houston, TX, United States, ³Department of Neurology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, United States, ⁴Atlanta VA Medical Center, Decatur, GA, United States, ⁵Department of Internal Medicine, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, United States

Around 200,000 veterans (up to 32% of those deployed) of the 1991 Gulf War (GW) suffer from GW illness (GWI), which is characterized by multiple deficits in cognitive, emotion, sensory and nociception domains. In this study we examined 60 GWI patients and 30 age-matched controls with resting state fMRI (rsFMRI) in order to map impairments in brain function networks in GWI with group independent components analysis. GWI veterans exhibited impaired/abnormally increased FC between different brain function networks, revealing brain mechanisms underlying neurological impairments in GWI.

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